


Those Hours of Darkness

by Escalus



Category: Elementary (TV), Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Cooking, Crossover, Detectives, Gen, Murder, Murder Mystery, Parenthood, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Werewolf Hunters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:27:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28659456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Escalus/pseuds/Escalus
Summary: Holmes and Watson investigate the baffling case of a prominent lawyer murdered and cut in half in his own home.  The clues point to the involvement of a young man from California and his circle of friends.  Scott McCall might hold the key to solving the mystery, but he seems to be fighting another war of his very own.
Relationships: Scott McCall & Stiles Stilinski, Sherlock Holmes & Joan Watson (Elementary)
Comments: 46
Kudos: 51
Collections: Fandom Trumps Hate 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [liliaeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/liliaeth/gifts).



_Bear in mind, Sir Henry, one of the phrases in that queer old legend which Dr. Mortimer has read to us,_  
_and avoid the moor in **Those Hours of Darkness** when the powers of evil are exalted._  


Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, _The Hound of the Baskervilles_

###### 

Squinting as the dawn squeezed its way between two buildings, Sherlock Holmes had to shield his eyes with his hand as he visually measured distances between the main landmarks on the streets. He turned away to examine the interior of this particular Gramercy Park brownstone. The door had been forced open, most likely with some sort of portable ram that many police departments in the United States employed. Detritus from the shattered door jamb littered the foyer all the way to the base of the staircase. Taking one step, he examined the floor, noting the signs of someone traversing. He leaned down and ran his finger on the hardwood floor then examined the first few steps of the staircase.

Humming to himself, he started moving through the house, eyes sweeping through the living room, the dining room, and the kitchen. There was no sign of any further disturbance. By the stove, a uniformed officer stood placidly, only slightly negligent towards his duty to keep an eye on the contents of the house. Through the opened back door, Sherlock observed Watson and Detective Bell in a quiet conversation over the body, having not moved since he left them a few minutes ago.

With a satisfied nod, he stepped out onto stoop carefully watching he placed his feet. The owner of the brownstone had chosen not to grow a lawn behind the house. Instead, a garden occupied all the space in the rear, save for a rather small brick patio. The light rain of the night before had slowly evaporated, bringing out the aroma of the flowers. 

“ _Astlibe chinensis, Convallaria majalis,_ and _lamprocapnos spectabilis.”_

“Huh?” The police officer in the kitchen said dully. 

“False goat’s beard, lily of the valley, and bleeding heart.” 

The officer’s face remain screwed up in confusion.

“The flowers. Those three are planted next to the house where they would be in the shade most of the time.” Sherlock cataloged the rest of the garden. “By the walls, areas which would get equal parts of shade and sun, are coral bells and black-eyed susans interspersed with hosta. In the middle, which obviously sees plenty of sun are bee balm, catmint, and miscanthus.”

“Uh. Is that important?”

“Everything is important. In this case, we have no weekend gardener. These are native plants and designed to contemplate each other and the composition of the yard.” He raised his voice. “All perennials, Watson.”

“If you’re done appreciating the horticulture, Holmes, I wonder if you could spend some time looking at the body,” Detective Bell grumbled unusually. “Because I’m a little lost about what the hell happened here.”

“Detective, my methods require me to go where my observations indicate. And, right now, they continue to draw me to this garden.” Sherlock peered even closer. “Watson is more than capable to perform a close examination of Mr. Carmichael’s corpse.”

Bell had long ago learned to trust Sherlock’s methods. “Is there something we’ve missed that you haven’t?” 

“Your forensic team has been thorough, and they’ve been remarkably careful not to trample too much of the crime scene. I will no doubt find their report enlightening, but they only use their eyes. I’ve been using my other senses this morning, and they’ve raised some questions that I can’t answer. In my profession, the questions I can’t immediately answer are far more interesting.” 

Bell turned from Holmes to Dr. Watson, who was still carefully studying the remains of Randolph Carmichael. Neighbors had reported the sound of shattering glass and multiple gunshots around two a.m. the previous night. Patrol officers responding to the call had found the victim in his back-yard garden. In two pieces.

“What I find interesting is that someone performed a hemicorporectomy at a murder scene, effectively and cleanly. It was performed by someone who knows what they’re doing.” Joan squinted at the bottom of the top half of a corpse who sued to be a big-time environmental lawyer. “I can count three bullet wounds on the torso, any one of which might have killed him, yet the killer still took the time to cut him in half.”

“Killers, Watson. At least three men and one woman. One man to break open the front door and flush the victim out.” He pointed to the rear of the yard. “The other three, according to their tracks, entered from the back gate and were waiting for Mr. Carmichael here when he leapt from his third-story bedroom window.”

“Carmichael heard them break into the house, and he must have suspected they were here to kill him.” Bell followed Sherlock’s gestures with his eyes. “Else why would he have jumped?”

“Precisely. I think that the assailants had foreseen that he would try to escape the way he did. The man who broke the front door open entered but never left the foyer. The other three waited in ambush there and shot the victim when he landed in the garden. If you look closely, you’ll see there are no tracks — other than those that belong to us, the patrol officers, and the forensic team — heading toward the back door. It had been raining earlier in the evening, yet there wasn’t trace of mud on the steps.”

Detective Bell headed off toward the garden gate. “I’m going to let the officers canvassing the neighborhood know they should be looking for that group. I’ll be right back.”

Joan Watson slowly stood up, her eyes still fixed on the body. “So what were they?”

“Hmmm?”

“The questions you can’t answer.”

Sherlock turned to look at the third-story window. “How high would you say that window is, Watson?”

“Twenty-five feet, give or take a few feet.”

“Is there any sign of Mr. Carmichael’s legs being broken?”

Joan shook her head. “No.”

“We can see the point of impact where his bare feet hit the ground, but there’s no sign of him rolling to absorb the impact. No trace of dirt or crushed plants on his nightclothes. No sign of any flowers being flattened in the garden and he was shot standing up. How did he jump down twenty-five feet and not shatter his legs?” 

She studied the trajectory and grimaced. “I don’t know.”

“Also, did you detect a faint odor coming from the body?” 

“My nose isn’t as good as yours, Sherlock.”

“It would be if you trained it, and if you had you would have noticed a distinct flowery odor that doesn’t belong in this garden. I’ve made a study of all the various types of poisons, and I can recognize a species of aconite when I smell it.” He gestured around him at the various flowering plants. “Yet there is no variety of wolf’s bane or monkshood growing in this garden.”

Joan knelt down once again and lean closer to the body, though she was careful not to touch it or to get blood on her clothes. “I smell it now. It’s coming from the bullet wounds.”

“Aconite is quite poisonous to the average human being, but applying it to bullets would seem a very odd tactic. It doesn’t work fast enough to make it an effective enhancement.” Sherlock shook his head in confusion. “I know in-the-field observation isn’t as thorough as an autopsy, but you do seem particularly fascinated by his wounds. What’s your best guess at the cause of death?”

“I’m fascinated by the wounds because I can’t give you a singular cause.” Joan shook her head. “The bullets should have been enough to kill him, but … it looks like he was still alive when they cut him in half.”

“Indubitably, the hemicorporectomy is another important clue. Though I have no idea at this time what it means, I can only suspect that given the way this played out, the killers must have thought it was necessary.”

Watson stood back up and away from the body, her inspection finished. Holmes was no longer looking at her but turned in place, studying the garden, the house, and the neighborhood around them. 

“Watson, lend me your phone for a moment.”

She took hers out of the pocket and handed it to him without hesitation. “Why? Where’s yours?”

Sherlock adjusted it without answering, then he shot out his arm and took a picture in what seemed to be a random direction. “In my jacket, but yours has a better camera.”

Joan followed the line it had to follow only to see a figure disappear from off the roof of a building a block away.

“Our spy was curious enough to wonder what was happening but careful enough not to get closer. This case has all the earmarks of being very interesting, Watson.” Working quickly, he called up the picture and enlarged it. “And I think that this young man might have some the answers.” 

Joan studied the observer. He was a younger man, perhaps early to mid-twenties, Hispanic, and with a slightly crooked jaw. “I think you have to be right.”

Sherlock Holmes winked. “At this point in investigation, Watson, I’m almost always right. It’s the later parts that get tricky.”

**~*~**

Scott McCall had moved too slowly, and he cursed out loud as he failed to dodge his picture being taken. In the split-second it had taken him to realize what the detective intended to do with the phone, it was too late. He had been listening to their conversation for clues as to where Carmichael’s killers might have gone next. He hadn’t even realized he’d been spotted.

There was little he could about it now, so he didn’t stop moving even after he had broken line of sight to the crime scene behind an elevator bulkhead. Stopping on the southwest edge of the roof, he looked down into the alley between the building he was on and the slightly shorter one next to it. If Holmes told others, he could find himself pursued by police within a few minutes. He didn’t have the luxury to go down the regular way.

Gathering himself, he leapt from the eaves of one building in a standing broad jump down to the fire escape two floors below, something no human could have accomplished. He landed heavily on both feet, only having to reach out a single hand to steady himself on the building’s wall. Without only a moment’s pause, he started to clamber down the stairs, rounding each corner as fast as he had dared. At the bottom, Scott dropped to the concrete alleyway between the buildings, glancing back only once in the direction of the Carmichael’s brownstone. He cocked his head, but there was no sign of pursuit yet.

He squared his shoulder and took a deep breath, composing himself. When he was confident he wouldn’t look like he was running from the cops, he left the alley and walked toward the busiest part of Manhattan. He didn’t meet anyone’s gaze, keeping his eyes fixed on the sidewalk a few feet ahead of him. He learned the hard way that the people of New York weren’t interested in eye contact or small talk with strangers. He matched his gait to every other pedestrian’s and headed directly towards Union Square.

As he walked, the reality of what he had learned settled in. As a result, he shoved his hands into his pockets only to discover his phone. Without thinking, he took it out to call Stiles, but it occurred to him that talking on the phone now could be dangerous. He needed to keep aware of his surroundings. Frowning, he put the phone away again.

In New York City, every day was a busy day, and by the time he reached Park Avenue he was confident he was simply another face in the crowd. He entered the first coffee shop he could find, which happened to be a Starbucks. Why not? Waiting in line, he decided on a Pistachio Frappuccino, but then his eyes fell on a price list. He wasn’t using his own money, but his step-father’s. He ordered a black coffee instead.

Coffee in hand, he chose a seat as far away from the windows and other customers as was possible, but he made sure he sat so he could see out the front window. He watched where the staff went. Mr. Argent had taught him to always have multiple exits from any public place. This Starbucks was busy, but it was so early in the morning that most people were simply enjoying their coffee rather than making conversation. Some were getting a jump on their work for the day on laptops or phones.

Scott forced himself to wait five minutes, his coffee cooling and untouched, before he took his phone out and hit the contact. It picked up, and he could feel himself relaxing at the sound of the voice.

“Intern Stilinski.”

After an unfortunate incident in Texas, Scott had started bringing a new burner phone on every mission, telling no one his number. “It’s me.”

“Hold on a moment.” On the other end of the phone, Stiles pushed his chair away from his desk and walked away. Scott listened to his footsteps and his breathing and the sounds coming from the other cubicles. Eventually, there was the sounds of elevator doors opening and closing. “You okay?”

“I’m fine. I was too late.”

“God damn it,” Stiles hissed into the phone. “When?”

“Last night. Lydia was right.”

“She’s always right. I was really hoping we could stop this one. Too many people are dying because of ‘too late.’”

Scott felt his eyes begin to burn; he couldn’t stop it. His claws and fangs began to extend without him being able to hold them back. He closed his eyes and lowered his head, shoving his hands under the table where the rest of the shop couldn’t see. 

“Scott.” Stiles called from the phone, which he could still hear perfectly from its position under the table. “Scott, you know I didn’t mean …”

It took him another minute before he was able to get the claws to retreat within his fingers so he could bring the phone back to speak into it. The entire time, Stiles kept insisting he wasn’t implying that it was Scott’s fault.

Scott opened his eyes and sneaked a quick glance at the mirror behind the counter. They were brown once again. 

“But you were right.” He finally spoke back into the phone. 

“No. No, I’m not right. You can’t do any more than you’ve already done, same as me, same as Derek, same as Lydia, same as everyone. You’ve tried harder than any of us.”

“Sure.” Scott plucked a napkin from the folder and spread it out on the table. If he kept his hands busy, maybe he wouldn’t lose control again.

“Don’t you _sure_ me.” 

“Stiles, there’s no need to get angry.”

“In my off-campus apartment, generously paid for by your step-father, I have a second bedroom. Do you know what I keep in that bedroom?”

With one hand, Scott folded the napkin in half. “Your board.”

“As you know, I find it very useful in keeping track of things, and I’ve noted on that board — you listening to me? — I’ve noted that in the three-and-a-half years since Monroe fled Beacon Hills, you’ve visited forty-seven of the fifty states except Hawaii, Rhode Island and Ohio. You’ve been to Canada, Mexico, and _fucking Greenland.”_

“Stiles—”

“Don’t interrupt me when I’m scolding you. If you were to go back to school in September — _which you should_ — you would be considered a second-semester freshman. A freshman, Scott.”

“Stiles—”

“So when you say sure in that passive-aggressive way you have of agreeing to my well-thought and completely correct opinion it means you don’t really agree with me and that will get me angry. I have more than enough evidence to back up every single thing I’ve said. You’ve worked harder than any of us.”

“It doesn’t seem to have done any good.”

“You’re the reason she changed her tactics!”

“ _We’re_ the reason.”

“Thank you, but you know as well that I attend class five days a week and fit in an FBI internship. Lydia is writing her dissertation. We help, but we have our lives. You don’t, and you shouldn’t act as if you do. I know you’re the alpha and you’ve got it in y our head that this means you have all the responsibility, but that also means that you get the credit, too. She changed her tactics from mass murder to targeted assassination, and she did it because you lead us against her. I have the kill list on my board as well. Tonight, I can send you a bar graph showing the decrease in her casualty rate over time.”

“No, you don’t have to do that.”

“I think maybe I do.”

“What do you want me to say?”

Stiles took a breath. “There’s so much I would you want you to say and mean right now, but unpaid interns can’t make unscheduled breaks last too long. So how about I want you to say you’ll be careful.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“And I want you to say that you’re okay, but I know that you’re not right now. So tell me you _will_ be okay.”

Scott nodded to the phone. “I’ll be okay. Hey, could you do me a favor? I don’t want you to risk anything.”

“What did we just talk about? Of course, I’ll do you a favor.”

“Can you look up two names for me?” Scott turned to look to make sure no one was close enough to hear. “Sherlock Holmes and Joan Watson. They’re connected to the NYPD.”

“Any reason?”

“I was eavesdropping on the crime scene. I think just … see what you can find out.”

“Will do, but I do have to get back to work. Eat something with protein. Call Lydia.”

Scott promised he would before hanging up. With one finger, he scrolled through his contacts until he found Lydia’s number. His finger hovered over it, but then he put the phone down, took a big gulp of his now cool coffee and went back to the counter. Stiles was right.

“Another black coffee?” The barista asked with a bit of a sneer.

“No. I’d like a Pistachio Frappuccino and one of those egg sandwiches.” Scott leaned forward slightly and let just a bit of his nature shine through. “And I could do with a little less sarcasm.”

From over the barista’s shoulder, the managed turned and frowned at the conversation. Scott smiled at her.

“Coming right up.” 

Scott didn’t go back to his seat right away but used the men’s room for the few minutes it would take to ready his order. Turning on the water, he worked the soap pump. The liquid was supposed to smell flowery even as it disinfected your hands, but to his nose, it smelled overwhelmingly chemical. But it was the only soap, so he scrubbed his hands. He scrubbed them as hard as he could, until his skin turned momentarily pink. Then he turned on the dryer until he had almost baked them dry. He looked up. 

The reflection in the mirror didn’t change. 

He left the restroom and glided by the counter, where his Frappuccino and sandwich were waiting for him. He studied the sandwich on the way back to his seat. Stiles wanted him to eat something, and he hadn’t eaten any breakfast this morning. In this uncomfortable chair far from home, he was going to do at least one thing right. Sighing once, he lifted the sandwich to his mouth and bit into it. With deliberate movements, he chewed; it felt like a chore.

He would call Lydia once he got back to the hotel room.

**~*~**

Joan woke up to a woman wailing in her ear. She wasn’t surprised, of course, Sherlock had spent many a different morning finding many different ways to wake her up. It had been very annoying at first until she managed to track that she would have probably gotten up in the next half hour every time he did, and he did it because he was excited to talk to her or there was something they needed to do.

The song on the stereo was indie rock, though the lyrics seemed a little jumbled and nonsensical. It sounded very much like Florence and the Machine, but she was more than familiar with all of that band’s songs. She rolled over to listen more carefully.

“Having trouble placing it?” Sherlock said with his usual irritating form of animation.

“Yes.” She yawned.

“It’s a product of Jukebox, a neural network created in the A.I. laboratories of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It analyzes a particular band’s body of work and uses algorithms to reproduce a song that might exist in the artists’ oeuvre.”

“Florence and the Machine.” Joan sat up and stretched. “Any particular reason?” 

“Perceptive of you, Watson. That university is our destination today. Our train doesn’t leave until ten. You have two hours to shower and there will be breakfast downstairs when you are ready. A courier from New York’s Finest dropped some files off for both of us about forty-five minutes ago. There’s no rush.”

He left her then and Joan began her daily routine. As much as she hoped she had been a good influence on Sherlock, she had to admit that he had been a good influence on her. One of the things that he had imparted to her was the importance of routine. In their work as consultants, there was very little stability. The hours were dependent on the case. They might be called to go to a different part of the city at any given time. People sometimes threatened them; sometimes shot at them. As a result of this chaos, the elements of habit became more important.

Joan had a very precise way of preparing in the morning. She didn’t need to do it to look nice; she did because it grounded her. By the time she was done, she was put together in more ways than one.

Sherlock was waiting for her down in what would have been in any other place the dining room. There was a pretty good spread this morning, but there was also a carton through which he was rummaging. It had the stamp of the NYPD on the side.

“Is that what they sent us?”

He held up on finger until he was finished the line. “Early forensic findings. Background information. Medical history of the victim for you.” He picked up a trio of thin manila folders and handed them to her. “Randolph Darius Carmichael, age thirty-eight. Law degree from Cornell, specializing in environmental law, specifically the protection of endangered species. Five years with the World Wildlife Fund. Three years with the Center of Biological Diversity in Tucson. Eighteen months as legal counsel for a United Nations anti-poaching program. He was presently working pro bono against the Dakota Access pipeline.”

“Any indication that this may be retribution?”

“None so far.”

Joan opened her folder and skimmed through it. Then another one. Then another one.” She glanced at the box. “Where are the others?”

“What others?”

“There’s got to be more to his medical history than this.”

Sherlock’s brow wrinkled and looked over. “They told me that’s everything.”

“According to this, he’s never seen a doctor.”

“That’s impossible, Watson.”

“Let me rephrase. He has all the necessary medical certification for travel, for school, for the political work he did the U.N. But he’s never been in the emergency room. He’s never had surgery. He’s never even have a checkup.”

“Does he have a general practitioner?”

“Yes. In Parishville, New York. St. Lawrence County, which according to these records he hasn’t been to see since he was eighteen. It’s very odd, but it’s not impossible I guess.”

“Maybe,” Sherlock frowned and dug into the box once again. “Especially since he was in a pretty significant car accident five years ago. He was driving his sports car when he was t-boned by a drunk driver.”

“Really?”

He held up a photograph of the crash — the car was nearly in a u-shape. Joan checked through the files. 

“No record of him going to the hospital.” She looked up at him. “You were right. What’s going on here?”

“I think we’ll find out more in Cambridge.”

“What’s there?”

“Not what, who. The last phone call that Carmichael received was within minutes of the attack.” Sherlock held up the phone logs. “The number belongs to a doctoral student in the Pure Mathematics at the Institute. We’re going to pay a visit to a Miss Lydia Martin.”


	2. Chapter 2

She circled the final product with her stylus. “Thus, we prove the theorem. Are there any questions?”

Turning from the digital whiteboard, Lydia Martin looked out over the sea of faces filling her classroom. Undergraduate students tended to be a mixed bag even at MIT. Some of her students expressed excitement at confronting the beauty of mathematics, some willingly endured the struggle to comprehend it in order to achieve what their goals, and some only showed up because it was where they were expected to be. She had only taught a dozen classes over two semesters so far, but she had quickly picked up being able to tell which students were which.

“The final examination will be next Tuesday at 1:00 p.m. in this room. Be warned. As one of my teachers once said to me, this final is so incredibly difficult that I’m not even sure I could pass it. My advice to you is to spend as much time as possible reviewing.” Groans echoed from each corner of the room. “I’m _kidding._ I’m certain I could pass it. But you? We’ll see. Class dismissed.”

The students filed out as Lydia packed up her own things. This was her last class of the day; all she had left were office hours and then she could go back to her apartment and get maybe seven or eight hours work done on her master’s thesis before sleeping.

She felt good. This was exactly what she had envisioned for her life ever since she realized she would need a vision for her life. It wasn’t perfect, but nothing was, and on the other hand, it surpassed her experiences in high school by every measure imaginable. Her classes could be tedious, filled with dull clods passing themselves off as students, but at least they weren’t shooting at her. She might be pulling out her hair over making sure her thesis would put her in the running for her ideal doctoral program, but was no longer woke up at a murder scene without realizing how she had got there. She wasn’t being controlled by her life; she was controlling it.

Tonight, she would put the incident of the night-before-last behind her, and focus on the paper. It had been essentially finished at the end of February, but she didn’t want it to be merely passable: she wanted it to be perfect. In any event, she could only work on it for two more weeks, as she had given herself a deadline of June 1st, whether it was perfect or not. Two days later, she would be in Washington for a two-week vacation; she hadn’t seen Stiles in the flesh since Christmas.

“Have a rough night?”

Karthik startled her form where he stood in the doorway of the classroom, leaning on the jamb. Though they had started the master’s program at the same time, he wasn’t anywhere near finishing his own thesis even though he was four years older than she was. If she hadn’t been with Stiles and she wasn’t so focused on her career right now, she would have jumped at the chance to date him. In addition to being one of the few people outside of her professors who could talk about math at her level, he was also entrancingly handsome.

That wasn’t to say she regretted still being with Stiles. They talked every night without fail, a routine she had come to relish. When something happened, good or bad, she immediately began to imagine how Stiles would react when sh told him. They were both friends and lovers, and that relationship was quickly becoming something as integral and as welcome to her as breathing.

Unlike Scott and all the things he represented.

She pushed that thought right out of her head. “Couldn’t sleep. I thought I hid it pretty well.”

“You might have, but I noticed a mistake in that derivation.” He pointed toward the board where she had been holding a review for the final.

“What?” She turned around. It took her a moment, but she found it. “Damn.”

“You don’t make mistakes like that unless you’re sleepy.” 

“Not a single student caught it,” she said sadly.

“Maybe they did, but they probably don’t want to upset Hot Scary Prof by pointing it out.”

Lydia frowned. “I’m not like that!”

“All professors are like that, even you, especially if you’re wearing Intimidating Clothes.”

Lydia look down at her ivory trumpet skirt and a flower print smock. “I don’t think it’s that intimidating.”

“You’re wearing glasses. You don’t need glasses.”

“Okay.” She smiled at him. “Maybe it’s a little intimidating.”

“Go home. Take a nap.”

“I can’t. I have office hours.”

“Lydia!” Karthik laughed. “It’s the last day of classes.”

“All the more reason not to skip them. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Karthik waved and turned away, sauntering back to his own classroom. She erased the board, grabbed her bag, and headed toward the teaching assistant office suite. The offices weren’t as spacious as the ones for faculty, but they were private enough. For a moment, Lydia thought about taking Karthik’s advice, but she could handle it. She’d easily be home in time for a late lunch.

Connie, the department secretary, looked up immediately when she entered. “There are some people here to see you.”

“Some of my students?”

“No, Ms. Martin. They’re from the New York Police Department.”

Lydia froze. She didn’t think it could be a coincidence. “Thank you, Connie. Where are they?”

“In the lounge.”

She smoothed out her skirt and checked her hair with a compact, before she went to find two people in a windowless storage room that had been repurposed as a break room for graduate students. A handsome, if slightly balding, gentleman stood at the window looking out over the campus, and a professional-looking woman read one of the _Dissent_ magazines that Jennifer Dickson purposefully left in the lounge constantly.

“Good afternoon. I’m Lydia Martin.”

“It’s not afternoon,” the man answered, sharply, turning to stare at her. He possessed a very intense stare. 

Lydia offered him a tight smile. “It is now 11:54. By the time we get our introductions finished and we start into whatever it is you want to talk to me about, it will be afternoon. In any event, it’s a trivial difference, especially when the truth is I don’t know you and don’t really wish you a good anything.”

The woman stood up, obviously the person in this duo who smoothed things over. “I’m Dr. Joan Watson, and this is Sherlock Holmes. We’re consultants with the New York City Police Department. We were hoping we could talk to you about Randolph Carmichael.” 

“Oh, Randolph? Why don’t you come to my office? We can talk privately there.” As tired as she was, she forced her smile to widen as she gestured in the direction her office. Unlike most of the other graduate students, Lydia had made an effort to make the small room comfortable. She hung romantic art that caught her eye alongside pictures of her family and friends. She had purchased an overstuffed loveseat so her students could talk to her without feeling as if they were being examined. Once Holmes and Watson had sat down, she took her own seat behind the desk. 

“See? 12:03.”

“Your point is taken, Miss Martin. Will you tell us how you know Randolph Carmichael?”

“He’s an acquaintance I’ve made through a mutual interest in wildlife.” Lydia folded her hands in her lap. “We’ve met both socially and at some environmental events.” 

It struck her once again how much of her life had been shaped by her simply having certain friends. When she found herself needing to lie, instead of concentrating on the reactions of the person she was lying to, she focused on taking pleasure from the word play. It defeated supernaturally-enhanced senses of hearing and smell. She seldom had any problem fooling the lycanthropes she encountered anymore.

Mr. Holmes seemed to be a bit sharper than the average shape-shifter. “Meeting him socially would imply you had things in common other than protecting Mother Nature.”

Lydia tilted her head. “What is this about?” She already knew what it was about.

“Mr. Carmichael was killed the night before last.”

“That’s terrible.” Lydia didn’t need to fake the emotion behind her words. She had screamed for his death, she had tried to stop it, and yet he had died anyway. She had liked Randolph. He was a good person.

“Of course, I’m pretty sure that you already knew this.”

“That’s an interesting conclusion, Mr. Holmes.”

“Not at all. You were the last person to talk to Mr. Carmichael before he died.” 

Lydia nodded in acknowledgment. “I did give him a call that night, yes.”

“At a quarter until two? What did you talk about?”

“Personal matters.”

Both of the consultants were experienced enough not to scoff, but she didn’t need to clues to know they what they were thinking. Mr. Holmes leaned forward, locking eyes with her, while the doctor glanced down at the floor. They reminded her of Scott and Stiles. Mr. Holmes was aggressive and quick-thinking, eager to uncover the answers, while Dr. Watson sat back and analyzed things from a different perspective. Unfortunately for them, she had learned how to deal with such a pairing a long time ago.

“I might consider trying to warn him about the people coming to kill him a personal matter.”

Lydia believed she managed to keep her face completely neutral. “Why, that’s a remarkable thing for you to say. Why wouldn’t I call the police?”

“That’s what I find interesting, Miss Martin. You didn’t call the police, but you called to warn him anyway. How did you know he was going to be attacked?”

“I didn’t know he was murdered until you told me.”

“Your friend didn’t tell you?” Mr. Holmes stood up and walked over to the wall. “This friend. Right here.” He tapped a copy of the picture that Sydney had taken during senior year that hung framed on her wall. He pointed directly at Scott. “This individual whom I saw observing the crime scene while the fine members of the NYPD were examining Mr. Carmichael’s dismembered corpse. I have a picture on Watson’s phone if you want to see it.”

“That’s unnecessary.”

Dr. Watson intervened from the couch. “We only want to catch the people who did this. If you know something, you can help us do that.”

Lydia looked between them and tossed her head to get her hair out of her face. “The fact that my friend was near the scene of Mr. Carmichael’s murder was …” She paused. “A coincidence. If you’ll excuse me, these are my office hours, and I need to be available for my students. If you need to speak to me again, here is my card.”

The two consultants didn’t offer any resistance, but Mr. Holmes had the slightest air of smugness around him. When they had, Lydia put her back to the door. She was tired of this. She had a master’s thesis to write and a life to live.

**~*~**

His stomach rumbled as he prodded at the sandwiches with a spatula. Scott hadn’t eaten anything since the night before, and his treacherous body was letting him know that it had noticed. Luckily, it wouldn’t be long before he could eat, since he was removing the food from the pan. As he patted the sandwiches dry with a paper towel to absorb some of the cooking oil, Scott suddenly sensed someone’s approach. He could tell who it was by their gait pretty; after six years as a werewolf, he had learned to recognize many things about his pack. He set the sandwiches to the side and started to wash the skillet in the sink.

The front door opened to reveal Lydia, who froze when she realized someone else was in her apartment. While her banshee powers allowed her to hear things that no one else could hear, it was a matter of scope and not acuity, so it took her a moment to realize who was in her small kitchen. She stared at him until Scott raised her hand in greeting. She stepped inside, put her bag down on the table by the door, and closed it behind her.

Her stiff posture and the sharp scent that filled the air indicated she was angry. Scott sighed.

“How did you get in here?”

“You gave me a key.”

Lydia thinned out her lips but then dropped her car keys in a bowl on the same table with an audible clank. She had insisted that he have a key, and he had finally taken it when she threatened him with bodily harm if he didn’t. When she turned back around, she had a look on her face that told him she was recalculating the entire situation. It was a look he had learned to recognize late in their sophomore year at Beacon Hills High School, and he had never forgotten it. 

“What’s that I smell?”

“I made lunch.”

“I’ve already eaten.” Lydia said brusquely and walked towards the hallway that lead to her bedroom.

Scott glanced at the clock. “Oh. Did your schedule change? It’s just that you used to teach class until 11:50 and then have office hours until 1:00. It’s not even 1:30 yet.” 

Lydia turned and looked at him with hooded eyes. “I’ll be right out.”

Grinning at his victory, he set full plates on the table and poured two glasses of the flavored water she liked so much. Then he returned to cleaning the dishes.

When Lydia finally came out, she had shed her teaching attire and replaced it with a pair of comfortable jeans and a Beacon Hills Lacrosse jersey — Stiles’ old one. The scent made Scott nostalgic for a moment. Lydia pulled out a chair and sat down at her place.

“Monte Cristo sandwiches?”

“I know you like them.”

“I do, but I can’t eat them.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t have your metabolism. I can feel my hips growing from the sight of them alone.”

“You look fine.” Scott tried to say lightly. Her refrigerator had been fully stocked with healthy foods. He had had to run to a nearby grocery store before he started cooking. 

Lydia glared at him as if she wanted to argue, but changed her mind. She picked up a sandwich and took a bite. 

“Why do I feel like I’ve done something wrong? I wanted to do something nice for you.”

“Why?” Lydia finished chewing her first bite before she answered.

“Because you’re my friend?”

“Oh, is that it? I thought perhaps that you were trying to apologize for getting me into trouble with the police.”

“I … did?”

Lydia nodded. “You got your picture taken at the crime scene yesterday morning. I didn’t see the picture myself, but the man sitting in my office less than an hour ago was pretty damn sure that it was you.”

“Mr. Holmes?” 

“So, it is true.”

Scott tamped down the urge to defend himself. He had been a block away on a rooftop. How could he predict that the detective would notice him? But Lydia need him to try to evade responsibility. “It’s true.”

“Well, that’s just _fantastic,_ Scott. Now, we’re people of interest in a murder investigation! I already was, because I happened to be the last person they know to speak to the victim, but now, to the casual observer, it looks like a conspiracy. So guess what that makes me?”

Scott frowned and looked down at his sandwich. It was getting cold.

“Guess!”

“A suspect.”

Lydia put her own sandwich down and pushed the chair away from the table. It made a screeching sound on the wooden floor. “Do you know what I should be doing this afternoon and far into evening, something that I’m not going to be able to focus on because I’m too upset?”

“Your master’s thesis.”

“Yes, my thesis! I’m too upset even to eat this wonderful fucking sandwich you made for me!” She grabbed the bridge of her nose, as if she suddenly had a terrific headache.

Scott recognized the gesture. The slight pain was supposed to allow her to corral her emotions, to stop herself from crying. He sat there, waiting for her to gather her self-control. To avoid staring at her, he looked down at his hands. 

Finally, he broke the silence. “What do you want?”

Lydia took in a sharp breath. “I want you out of my fucking life. I don’t want to meet any more werewolves or wendigoag or any other person that isn’t a 46-chromosome human being. If we can’t manage that, I want to not foretell any more death. I don’t want to have to give one single thought to what Monroe is doing this week or which one of my friends might get shot or killed. Get out of my life, Scott, and take all this bullshit with you.”

“Okay.” 

He probably should be just as angry as she was, but he wasn’t. After all, he too wished he could somehow do the same, but that wasn’t possible for him. It’d been almost four years since Monroe’s crusade had begun, and it had taken so much from everyone. 

Lydia had almost lost her admittance to MIT, though her natural genius had allowed her to compensate so well that she was about to complete her masters without much trouble. Yet, she, and every single person she cared about, had been threatened with death at least once in that time. It wasn’t an unreasonable request she was making.

“You’re not supposed to say that, you idiot!” she snapped.

“What?”

“You’re not supposed to say _okay_ like a big dumb dog. You’re supposed to remind me that you didn’t start this. That I didn’t start this. That this was done to us, and if I give up now, then everything we’ve gone through is simply going to be done to someone else. Monroe and people like Monroe will continue hurt innocent people, because we’re the people in the best position to stop them. You’re supposed to tell me that I have to be involved, that what I know makes me responsible.”

“I’m not going to do that, Lydia.” Scott got up from seat to walk over to the other side of the table. Lydia was still sitting in her chair, so he squatted down next to her. “This wasn’t supposed to be our lives. We weren’t supposed to know what we know. Coming here and doing what you’re doing with puzzle theory, that was what you were supposed to do. I’m not going to insist that you give it up for people you don’t even know.”

“Game theory.”

“What?”

“Game theory, not puzzle theory. And you’re also wrong about what I was meant to do. Lorraine knew that I would be able to do this.”

“Your grandmother loved you, but she saw things through her own experiences. She wanted to understand what had happened to her, and she wanted to protect you from the same type of tragedy that befell her because she didn’t. She couldn’t possibly want you to spend your life fighting a war in the shadows. And neither do I.”

Lydia covered her face with her hands for a moment, and Scott just stayed where he was. 

“You’ve followed me since the concert in the school. But being my friend, being my pack, isn’t a shackle. You didn’t sign your entire life away. You can stop any time you want.”

“If I can, so can you.”

Scott shook his head, rising to his feet. “No, I can’t. It’s just not possible. If I could have, I would have done so the night Kate and Peter died at the ruins of the Hale House. I made a decision then, and I keep making the same decision, again and again. I can’t fight who I am.”

“I can’t promise anything.” She said at last. “But it’s getting to the point that I might have to make a choice between life I want and the life all this …” She waved her hand at him. “… requires from me.”

“I know.”

“I want to be a mathematician not a soldier or a spy. You’re not a soldier or a spy, either. You’re not a superhero, no matter what Stiles thinks. We should leave things like that to the professionals.”

Scott’s face scrunched up wrinkling around the eyes, then it expanded and he started to smile. 

“Oh, I know that look. You just thought of something.”

“I did,” Scott nodded. “I think you’re right. We should leave this up to the professionals.”

**~*~**

Joan stood before her front door, considering how to solve the problem before her. She had bought a little more groceries than she had expected. The shop was only two blocks away, so it wasn’t that much of a problem to walk back, but navigating the house would be difficult. With some Herculean juggling, she managed to get the front door open.

“Sherlock? You home?”

There was a wordless exclamation from the room that she had labeled as the study in her head. No one else called it that.

“Come here and help me with the groceries?”

“I’m quite busy right now!”

She rolled her eyes and went to the kitchen. Sherlock often retreated into literalness when he wanted to avoid a task. He wasn’t lazy; he simply enjoyed things that were interesting to him, and he hated interruptions when he was deeply involved in something like that. If she had insisted, he would help her, but otherwise he would take advantage of the opening she had given him.

It wasn’t that much extra work, so she didn’t press. After she had put the rest of it away and put the bags in the recycling bin, she tracked him down to the study. 

“So I’m assuming you’ve made progress.”

“I have indeed, Watson! I’ve identified our mysterious observer.” He turned one of his screens to face her. “Scott McCall, age 22, hailing from Beacon Hills, California.” 

She nodded. “That’s not a recent picture.”

“It’s from his high school yearbook. When observing the pictures in Miss Martin’s office, I noted that the background was obviously a school, but it clearly didn’t resemble MIT. Luckily, their mathematics department requires all teachers — including teaching assistants — to post their vita online for their students, so I was able to identify her hometown. After that, it was merely a matter of looking through the yearbooks.”

“Where would you find yearbooks for a high school on the other side of the country?”

“I pay for a service. There’s a company that digitizes them.” Sherlock said offhandedly, smirking at the computer. “The rest, as they say, is Google. They both graduated in 2013. Apparently, Mr. McCall was a lacrosse captain and Miss Martin, in addition to being Prom queen, entered MIT as a junior.”

“While she did strike me as intelligent, but … that’s very impressive.”

“The other two individuals in the picture are Malia Tate and Miesczyslaw “Stiles” Stilinski. I wasn’t able to figure out where Miss Tate is at the present time, but Mr. Stilinski is a member of the student body at George Washington University and an intern at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“Any connection to Mr. Carmichael?” 

“I cannot find yet anything yet, but I haven’t eliminated the possibility. I did find out that from 2011 to 2013, Beacon Hills temporarily became the murder capital of California. There were over a hundred murders in that three-year period.”

“It only has a population of thirty thousand. That’s remarkable, and even more remarkable that it’s not more famous.” Joan looked over his shoulder at the stories he had gathered from California websites.”

“Life is infinitely stranger, Watson, then anything the mind of man could invent. Until the NYPD finishes its forensics examination this remains our only lead, so I intend to follow it. I’m going to ask to see if Detective Bell will contact the Beacon Hills Police Department and see what they can tell us.”

She pulled up a chair beside him. 

“I think I’m going to go over these articles in the news service. See if I can find something connecting the four people in that photograph to the murders.” 

“Excellent. I was hoping you would say that. I’m going to dig deeper into Mr. Carmichael. Perhaps we’ll be able to find something that connects all of them.”

Joan hummed. “So it’s still interesting to you.”

“A man was cut in half after being shot and surviving a leap from his third story window. I think these two young people know why, but they don’t want to tell the police. Unfortunately for them, I don’t think I’m going to let them keep their secret.”


	3. Chapter 3

The monitor remained the same way it had been for the last thirty minutes. Chris Argent fantasized about putting his fist through the screen, but resisting that urge took little effort on his part. He had mastered not giving into the urge for violence without thinking quite early in his life. It had been a necessary skill to develop when he had dedicated himself to the Code. 

Instead of a window for the conference call, all the program had put up on the screen was a black square, so dark he could study his own reflection. There were a few more lines. A few more wrinkles. His beard and his hair had a few more strands of gray in it, and there was a patch of white on his chin.

His age shouldn’t bother him. Being two years shy of fifty did mean that he wasn’t as quick in a fight anymore, and he could compensate with his experience. He was still able to perform his duty. He was still able to help. Even if he hadn’t been able to, people in his life kept telling him that he had done so many things in the last thirty years, that it wouldn’t be a terrible thing if he took a step back from it.

He had done many things in the last forty years, he reasoned, both good and bad. He hoped that the lives he had protected would make up in some small way for his many mistakes. Even though he had lost so much, he had a second family now, so he didn’t feel alone and adrift. 

As always, he rejected the impulse to compare the people he had had before and the people he had now; they shouldn’t be compared. What he had with Melissa couldn’t be what he had had with Victoria. Scott had never been comfortable with him acting as a father, but his step-son didn’t seem to resent when he tried.

No, his present dissatisfaction with the passing of the years arose from somewhere else entirely. As he had once told Allison, the Argent family trained their sons to be soldiers and their daughters to be leaders. He was no exception, but age was pushing him more and more towards strategy rather than tactical thinking, the long term rather than short term, and he was starting to have to leave the actual fighting to younger people. It didn’t sit well with him.

Especially since most of the people who were doing the fighting had been children whom he had failed, and in his own mind he hadn’t even come close to making it up to them. Yet things were conspiring to make it no longer the best idea for him to take point, as this piece-of-shit computer was doing its best to remind him.

“Any luck?”

“No, Mel,” he said irritably. They had reached the point in their relationship when they could get snappy with each other and it didn’t mean that the marriage was in trouble. “As you can probably tell by that fact that there is nothing on the screen.”

“You only have fifteen minutes before the meeting.”

“I _know_ that—” He turned around sharply and stood up. She was standing there with a smile on her face and two cups of coffee, one in each hand. 

“Alan, Noah and Parrish will be here in a few minutes. The sheriff just texted me. Maybe they can help.”

“As if Noah knows video conferencing software better than I do.”

She finished crossing the living room to deliver his beverage. “If it’s a problem, we can just call Danny. I’m sure he’d like to come over to our house at nine a.m. to set up a pack call.”

“Danny?” Chris felt his brows contract. “Jackson’s friend?”

“And Ethan’s ex-boyfriend. He just finished his degree in computer science — his mother said it was in something called networking and distributive systems — from Caltech and now he’s home.” 

“I’m not going to ask a twenty-something to come over and fix my computer problems. I’m not a senior citizen yet.”

She kissed him on the cheek. “That’s an ageist stereotype, honey.” Melissa’s 1000-watt smile dimmed a little. “He’d probably say no, anyway.”

Taking a sip of his coffee, Chris waited patiently for her to continue. He had learned her tells, and she had something on her mind. 

“He got out for a reason, you know.”

“Got out of Beacon Hills?”

Melissa walked over to the computer and started fiddling with it, so Chris couldn’t see her face. After living with her for over two years, he had finally discovered where Scott got his unwillingness to talk about things that were bothering him. He had noticed the pattern in his new family and analyzed the possible methods of handling it. The best approach turned out to be leading her to make her point, slowly and carefully, as one would stalk a deer. 

“Scott told me that he started to figure out the whole werewolf thing by overhearing him and Stiles talk — they weren’t used to anyone paying attention to them before so they kind of forgot if they didn’t watch their volume people might be interested in what they had to say.”

Chris chuckled dryly. He remembered how painfully earnest Scott had been while trying to conceal his lycanthropy from everyone and how surprisingly brash Stiles had been when he confronted Chris about Kate’s actions.

“Then after Jackson got the Bite and Ethan had targeted him for seduction, he put two and two together. He always had a good head on his shoulders.”

She still hadn’t turned around.

“Sounds like it.” All of them were gathering at the McCall-Argent house for a teleconference on the crusade’s latest actions. Monroe was another human being who had uncovered the supernatural on their own. “If you have that luxury, it might be wise to take advantage of it.”

“That’s not what I told Scott, is it?”

“He didn’t have same opportunities. That’s not your fault.”

She didn’t answer right away and then, after a moment, she reached out and flipped a switch. The image from the camera appeared in one corner of the screen. “It might help if you turned the camera on.”

“Oh.” He moved to the camera which was linked to the computer. “It was right in front of me and I didn’t even notice.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

Chris took another sip of his coffee and put it down. “It means I didn’t notice it. Why don’t you tell me what’s really bothering you?”

“He’s twenty-two.”

“Last time I checked, yes.”

Melissa shot him the stink eye. “I don’t need sass right now. If I wanted sass, I’d call Stiles.”

Nodding slowly, he took her by the hand and had her sit down on the couch. She resisted for a moment, but she relented as he knew she would. He took her hands in his and waited for her to speak again.

“It’s been six years. By the time I was twenty-two I had already met Rafe. I had an arrest record for underage drinking. I’d surfed off Santa Cruz and went hiking in Belize. I was on my way to a career in nursing. What does he have?”

“A lot of people are alive today who wouldn’t have been if he hadn’t done what he did.” 

“That’s other people. What does he have for himself? Power he never wanted, titles that don’t mean anything to anyone not trying to kill him, an ex-girlfriend, a dead girlfriend, and another ex-girlfriend interning with demigods who live underground, however that works.” Melissa threw up her hands in frustration. “Oh, I forgot enough physical trauma to have a dedicated therapist.”

Chris tilted his head to the side. 

“I pushed him out there, but I didn’t think it would consume his entire life. He’s a man now, a man who hadn’t gone more than six months without having to deal with someone trying to kill him since he first learned to drive. This isn’t what he wanted his life to be; seems like it’s what I wanted.”

“What did you want for him?”

“I didn’t want to be his father. Rafe isn’t a terrible person. He’s not going to go on a killing spree like Peter or sacrifice innocents to gain power like Jennifer, but he is very, very selfish. He cheated on me. He drank. He hurt Scott, and not just by throwing him down the stairs, but by vanishing from his life. He did all that, and he could look himself in the face because he didn’t see anything wrong with putting himself first. I didn’t want Scott to be like that.”

“You succeeded.”

“Yes, but I went too far. I made him into you.”

Chris dropped her hands. 

“Don’t tell me that you weren’t like him at his age! Scott told me the story about you making a weapons deal with gangsters when you were eighteen. Scott may not be doing that, but he just spent the last four years running around the country fighting a war with a fanatic. You …” She hesitated.

“Go on. We promised each other that we would be honest.”

“You came here with Victoria to give Allison a chance to be a normal girl.”

“We failed.”

“But you tried. I didn’t. I never told him that he had a choice. I told him that if he could do something, he had to do it. I guess I realize now that you reap what you sow.”

“That’s not fair to you or to—” 

Someone knocked on the door. It had to be the police. 

“Put a pin in that,” Chris announced getting up and heading to get it. “We’re talking about this later.”

“We don’t have to.”

“We _are._ ”

The Sheriff of Beacon County, his senior deputy, and the local veterinarian-slash-emissary were waiting outside. “Come on in.” 

Noah Stilinski carefully stepped into the house. Things had been relatively quiet in the last few years, because while Beacon Hills still had an active Nemeton drawing supernatural creatures to it, its role as the origin point for Monroe’s anti-supernatural crusade, as the headquarters of the Argent family, and as the hometown of this century’s True Alpha had discouraged most supernatural creatures, both benign and malevolent, from risking it. The worst thing that the sheriff had had to deal with in the last three years had been a car theft ring. 

Part of the peace was due to Parrish. His human aspect had continued to pursue his idea of being a very good deputy, and he would have become the Sheriff’s right-hand man even if his other aspect hadn’t become so very useful in monitoring the less normal aspects of the job. As Parrish had slowly resolved the conflict between his animating spirit and the body and mind which embodied it, he had become far more attuned to the tree he had been conjured to protect. No one could approach the Nemeton anymore without him sensing it.

Alan Deaton had continued to serve as Scott’s Emissary, so it was a good sign that Scott had specifically asked if he could join them. Things had been strained between the alpha and the veterinarian over the last year. Alan had repeatedly suggested that Scott was stretching himself too thin by taking responsibility for Monroe’s actions and his objections had only grown louder as time passed, so much so that Scott had started to avoid him. The alpha wasn’t angry, but he couldn’t bring himself to let Monroe be someone else’s problem. To both of their credit, neither of them seemed willing to let the conflict sever their relationship.

“Anyone know what this is about?” Noah asked the room. 

“Scott just said that there’s been a development that he wants to talk to all of us about?” Chris explained. “Why don’t we all sit down?”

“Us or the pack?” Alan wanted clarification.

“Us.” Chris shook his head. “Scott doesn’t want the others involved yet. He’s not sure he wants them involved at all.”

“Is that wise?” Parrish asked.

“It isn’t.” Deaton answered even though the question had been directed towards Chris.

“I don’t know. He hasn’t told me his plan yet.”

As if on cue, the computer beeped. Scott’s face peered out from the screen. In the background, he could see Lydia Martin, looking pensive. Chris went over and enabled the audio. 

“Hello. Can you see everyone?”

“Oh, hey, Argent.” Scott could never bring himself to call him Chris or Dad to his face. “It’s working on my end. Is Stiles on yet?”

“Let me ping him.”

“What’s this all about, honey?” Melissa called over Chris’s shoulder. “Is there anything wrong?”

“Actually, I think something may have broken our way. There’s a chance we can put Monroe herself out of commission, but I’m going to need help to do it. I’ll go into it once Stiles gets on.”

The five people in the living room arranged themselves so they could all be seen and seen for the video conference. As usual, the sheriff sat as far away from Melissa as he possibly could. They were never going to have the friendship they once had, though at least Noah and Melissa were now speaking to each other. Noah’s arrest of Kira had shattered their previous closeness. She had asked him to put his badge away to help her, and he had failed to do that, even though she had several times broken hospital protocols to help him when he needed it. It hadn’t helped that he had never even tried to apologize to either Melissa or the Yukimuras. Noah was simply too stubborn to admit a mistake to anyone but his son.

Yet time had passed and the wounds had healed, especially with the necessity of coordinating against Monroe and her crusade.

Stiles appeared, filling up half of the screen. 

“Hey, Pops. Welcome to the 21st century!”

“Stiles, I videoconference at work all the time.”

Scott smiled at the interchange. “Okay. I don’t want to keep you too long, because if we agree on this plan, we have a lot of work to do. You all know that she got Carmichael. Unfortunately, the NYPD is suspicious of Lydia and me, as she called him to warn him right before the attack and one of the investigators got a picture of me checking out the crime scene.”

Noah and Parrish shared a glance. 

“We don’t think they have anything solid on either of us, but it still means that Lydia and I are on their radar. But it might provide us with an opportunity. Stiles, tell everyone what you found out about those detectives.”

“Sherlock Holmes and Joan Watson are consulting detectives for the NYPD.”

“What’s a consulting detective?” Melissa interrupted.

“Holmes is an expert in difficult crimes. He’s on the payroll, but he not actually a police officer,” Stiles explained. “He was once a detective for Scotland Yard and he has worked for MI-6; he holds both British and American citizenship.”

Chris grimaced at that. 

“His colleague is Dr. Joan Watson. She’s also a licensed surgeon.” 

“Did she have a specialty?” Alan asked, seemingly at random.

“Uh,” Stiles rifled through his notes. “I don’t know. I do know that they’re both well respected by … well, everyone.”

“That’s bad.” Parrish looked at others for confirmation.

“Maybe not,” Scott resumed. “That’s what we’re here to talk about. I think it’s clear by now that chasing after Monroe is no longer working.”

Lydia punched him in the arm, though not very hard.

“I mean, it’s not working enough. She’s not killing whole packs anymore, and as people keep reminding me, it’s because we’ve been putting pressure on her. But we don’t have enough resources to protect every supernatural creature she’s managed to uncover.”

“You might if you …”

“No, Alan. I’m not dragging Liam and the others out of school.” Scott said it with finality. “You know why I don’t want to do that.”

“I do, Scott. We’ve had that conversation before, and I will say again that every argument you’ve made to keep the others out of it applies to you as well.”

Scott’s eyes dropped to the ground and then they came up. “These detectives might be the key to making that whole thing moot. We can lure Monroe into a trap that she won’t see.”

“What kind of trap?” Stiles and his father said together. 

Scott swallowed. “Now, hear me out before you get angry …”

Every single person on the call except Chris started shouting at the same time. They had worked with Scott long enough to know exactly how he was thinking of baiting the trap. 

Chris finally raised his voice. “So I take it that you want to lure Monroe into a position where these the NYPD can arrest her. It’s a good plan.”

Suddenly, Chris had become public enemy number one from the looks he was getting.

“Scott’s right.” He had to defend the plan and himself. “Chasing her has become a waste of time and money; she’s too careful. She gets to choose when and where she acts; she can find plenty of targets which she can strike at while controlling all the variables. She’s not going to go for a riskier target unless we give her something she thinks is worth the risk. That has to be Scott.”

“And how is this going to be different than any other time he’s done it?” Stiles grated through the line.

Chris looked directly at the camera and nodded for Scott to continue, though he had an idea already what he was going to say.

“We’ve been careful so far to keep law enforcement out of this,” Scott explained. “That’s how we’ve always done it, so she’s going to see us coming if we do everything the same way. We’re going to think outside of the box. I think Holmes and Watson are good enough to catch her.”

“While I appreciate you trying to bring this war to a close, I want to point out that the risk to your life, which I assume will be significant in order for it to be too tempting for Monroe to refuse, will be for naught if these detectives fail to catch her.” Deaton’s voice carried a note of concern, which he seldom sure. “As much as I would like to see you return home, I’d rather you be breathing when you do so.”

“I second that!” Melissa exclaimed. 

“They’re really good.” Stiles spoke up. “I’ve read some of their case files.”

“And you got them how?” Noah demanded.

“That doesn’t matter.” His son waved him off. “What does matter is the other danger. They might discover things we don’t want them to. That they can’t learn about.” He made a claw-and-fang gesture.

“That’s where the rest of us come in,” Lydia interrupted. “We need to figure out how to give Holmes and Watson just enough information for them to arrest Monroe for the death of Randolph Carmichael and the attempted murder of Scott, yet not enough to figure out the existence of the supernatural.”

Deaton nodded suddenly after a glance around the room, probably coming to the same conclusion. The people here — law enforcement, an emissary, a hunter, a medical professional — were the people needed to help craft that type of ruse. “It’s difficult, but possible.”

“How will we even get them the information?” Melissa demanded.

“That’s not going to be a problem,” the sheriff said heavily. “We got a request from the NYPD for it this morning. I was going to bury the request, but it’s just the sort of opportunity we need right now. That is, if we’re going to do this.”

The room fell silent. 

“I have to remind everyone that this is misleading a police investigation,” Parrish spoke up. “I know we’ve done it before, but that was in reaction to the actions of others. This time, we’re going to do it on purpose.”

“Semantics,” Chris shrugged. “We do what we have to.”

“It’s not semantics.” Scott’s voice carried across the room. “No one _has_ to be involved in this. I hope you would want to help, but I can understand if this is going too far. It’s probably wrong of me to ask you to do this at all, but I saw what they did to Randolph. If we can stop her, maybe no one else has to die.”

In the end, no one chose to leave the room.

**~*~**

Joan sat in the office they had set aside for this investigation at the 11th precinct, setting aside the file she had just read gently. She shook her head; the sheer amount of materials that were represented from the boxes seemed a daunting task.

“This is sort of incredible.”

Bell gestured at the boxes. “I know, right? Apparently they’re having computer problems and couldn’t figure out how to send them digitally, so they printed the files out and shipped them all.”

“I guess it’s better than nothing, but I was resorting to the scope.” Joan picked up the next folder and opened it. “I can’t believe that McCall is connected to six boxes worth of cases.”

“Unfortunately, they’ve requested that these files remain at the precinct because there are minors involved.” Bell turned to Sherlock. “I know how you like to take them home in order to think about them in depth, but they’ll have to remain in this room.”

Sherlock grunted noncommittally from where he was focused on his own reading. 

“What he means to say is we understand and thank you, Marcus.” Joan answered for her partner sarcastically.

“You’re welcome.” 

“Detective Bell!” Sherlock suddenly exclaimed.

“Yes?” Marcus turned from the door.

“We will need at least two more white boards in that case. I will need to arrange some of this information spatially.”

A sigh. “Anything else?”

“No. I think that will be sufficient.”

Joan and Marcus exchanged a look somewhere between exasperation and fondness. They’d both been around Sherlock enough when the game was afoot.

They worked in silence for another twenty minutes. Joan poured over the report of a serial killer who had been inspired by ancient Celtic rituals to murder twelve people. Something bothered her about the police reports however. There were autopsies and the reproduction of crime-scene photos, of course, as expected.

McCall had been listed as a witness in four of the murders: Heather Snow’s, Kyle Clark’s, Dr. Elaine Hilyard’s, and Deputy Tara Graeme’s. He was also a witness to this serial killer’s attempted murder of his boss, Alan Deaton. 

And yet, as far as Joan could find, if anyone had interviewed Scott McCall, they had not been included. It was unthinkable, especially since the serial killer had never been caught.

What could possibly have went on there?

“What do you make of this?” Joan asked Sherlock. 

“It’s a feud.” Sherlock continued to look through the papers without looking up. “Perhaps feud is too inexact. An inter-generational vendetta perhaps? A private war? The pattern of the deaths are not the work of one mind, Watson, but the work of several different murderers motivated in different ways from a single source, like branches of a dead tree bearing fruit.”

“We’ve only been going over them for an hour. Are you sure about that?”

“At this point, it’s but an intuition, but I am confident that as I dig deeper I shall find more evidence supporting my hypothesis. When Detective Bell returns with the white boards I asked for, I will start arranging the victims on it, and I am confident a pattern will emerge. Most murder victims can be grouped by proximity or by category. Serial killers tend to be fixated on those victims that serve whichever particular need their pathology dictates. _Successful_ serial killers make sure that there is as little a connection as possible between their victims in order to preserve their ability to procure more. Mass murderers tend to focus on a specific group of people as their targets, such as the employees of an institution or a limited social group. Logically, the victims will share certain characteristics.”

“There are groups involved, from what I’ve seen.”

“True. But the different groups don’t relate to each other closely enough to fit the profile of a mass murderer, as far as I can tell right now. Distinct and isolated social relations among the victims in a narrow geographical area are strong indicators to me that this isn’t simple crime, even though it shares singular characteristics. It’s far more.”

Sherlock stood up and walked over to only white board in the room. He glued a picture of Scott McCall in the center.

_“It’s a war.”_

“So is he one of the killers or is he one of the victims?” Joan asked, studying the picture along with her mentor. 

“I think he’s a soldier.” Sherlock folded his hands behind his back. “I suspect he may even be a general. The only thing I am absolutely sure about is that we are being drafted into it.”

She looked at the boxes. It made sense. “You think we’re being led to a conclusion.”

“The evidence sent to us by the Beacon Hills Police Department has been edited and doctored by people who are very good at what they do. They’re simply not as good as I am. On the other hand, they were good enough to succeed at their goal. Before I was interested, now I’m fascinated. We have a lot of work ahead of us.”


	4. Chapter 4

Stiles stared at him from the laptop’s screen. The barely-constrained emotions fixed on his face formed an expression with which Scott was intimately familiar. “You set the computer up exactly as I told you to do?”

“Yes, Stiles.” Scott clung his rapidly fraying patience. “You walked me through it five minutes ago And ten minutes before that. And a half an hour before that.”

“Don’t get snippy with me. I’m trying to help.”

Scott grabbed the bridge of his nose. “I know, but you keep asking me the same questions over and over again.”

“It’s called double checking.”

“It’s called anxiety.”

Scott searched the hotel room; there had to be something he could use to distract himself from this conversation.

“Well, excuse me for caring.”

“You’re not the one in danger, Stiles, so why don’t you give me a god-damn break! I know you don’t like this plan and you don’t want me to do it, but you’re not going to annoy me to the point where I do what you say just to get you to shut up.”

Even though it was through a computer, he heard the air rush from Stiles’s lungs as if Scott had punched him in the gut. His irritation vanished, but he had to say something.

“Well, am I wrong?”

“No,” his best friend admitted sourly, “but it’s still really rude for you to say. You can’t think of another way to do this? Any other way”

“We’ve been over this — the whole pack has been over this — so many times that I can give you my arguments for it in my sleep. Stiles, can’t you just—”

“Don’t you say it! Don’t say that I have to trust you. Because I don’t! I don’t trust you not to do something totally self-destructive because you think it’s the only thing left to do. And, I’ll have to correct you at least once more, the _whole pack_ has not been over this. In fact, most of the _whole pack_ doesn’t even know you’re doing it. Which is bad form considering it concerns all of them.”

Scott clenched his fists. He stood up and reached out to shut the laptop off but Stiles interrupted. 

“Don’t you dare!”

He stopped. When it came to his best friend, he always stopped.

“Stiles—”

“I want you to imagine what Liam is going to feel like if he wakes up tomorrow morning or the morning after that with red eyes. He doesn’t know about any of this. He is your heir, right? If Monroe is standing over you with a broadsword and about to cut you in half, you know who you’re going to pass the alpha spark to, right?”

“Stiles—”

“Or are you going to act like a selfish prick any more than you already are and not pass it on to anyone when you inevitably get murdered during this ridiculous plan you’ve concocted with my girlfriend and our psychotic parents!”

“Stop. Just _stop._ ”

Stiles opened his mouth to continue his tirade but then he shuts it with an audible click. He must have heard the anger in Scott’s voice.

“I know it’s dangerous!” Scott wished they were in the same room for this conversation. When he could hear someone’s heart beat stutter in fear, when he could smell the chemo signals of anxiety and regret, it was easier to keep calm. When it was just a face on a computer, it was far harder to control his anger. “Part of being the leader means that sometimes you don’t have to follow majority rules. I know that most of the pack would be opposed. I know that if this goes wrong, it will be unfair to Liam and Hayden.”

“Unfair to everyone!” Stiles shouted over the computer connection. He never could keep quiet when he felt he had something important to say.

Scott grimaced. “The truth is … this time I don’t care.”

“Sure you don’t.”

“No, Stiles, I really don’t care. You’ve made your point, but this decision isn’t yours. It’s mine. The only person I’m risking is me. I want to go home, Stiles, and then I want to go to school. I want the same chance that everybody else got.”

“Then come home.”

“I can’t do that if Monroe is out here picking innocent people off. Maybe there was a time when I could have turned away, but that’s long past. The only way I get what I want is if I catch her.”

Stiles worked his jaw for a moment before finally saying something. “There are other ways.”

“We’ve spent the five days going over other options.”

“I’m talking about … look, I agree with you that Monroe is the key. We don’t have to capture Monroe. How many graves have to be dug before killing her is justified?”

Scott shook his head sharply. “Oh, great. We get to have _this_ discussion again. I’m not assassinating Monroe.”

“You don’t have to!” Stiles licked his lips. “There are others who could do it for you.”

Scott felt the scowl form on his features; he couldn’t stop it. “Even if I trusted Peter not to somehow turn this to his advantage, why do you think that Monroe wouldn’t be ready for him?”

“I don’t like Peter any more than you do, but if there’s one thing he can do, it’s kill people.”

“The problem is that he’s not really that good at it,” Scott exclaimed. “That’s what none of us understood, back then. I didn’t figure it out until after the Anuk-Ite myself. Peter’s really effective against fat humans on ladders and old bus drivers. His only real advantage is his complete lack of integrity. He will do anything and everything to get what he wants, such as killing Laura. He only won because she didn’t think she had to defend herself!”

“How do you know that?”

“He showed me! He shoved the memory of him killing her into my head, remember? That’s all he has. He was able to fool Derek back then because Derek couldn’t possibly imagine that Peter would deliberately hurt Laura, so he believed the lie. That’s why even though Derek worked with Peter he killed him when I proved it wasn’t. Peter wasn’t out of his mind, unless you think he was still out of his mind when he worked with Kate and sent his own daughter after me.”

“Okay, but maybe that willingness is what we need.”

“Monroe isn’t a high-school junior!” Scott took a deep breath. “She might have been vulnerable back when she was Gerard’s apprentice, but we’ve been at this for four years. What has Peter been up to?”

“How would I know?”

Scott raised his eyebrow in a passable imitation of Derek. He had learned from the best. Stiles grimaced. 

“Okay, okay. Yes, I’ve been keeping track of him. Peter’s been spending money trying to buy Malia’s love and Derek and Cora’s forgiveness. I think that Monroe’s hunters went after him once. He didn’t fight them; he evaded them.”

“She’s not going to be surprised by anything that Peter has in his musty old bag of tricks. That’s why using Holmes and Watson is my only hope.”

“What about Theo?”

“Theo has spent the last five years making up for what he did under the Doctors. He’s changed into a person I’m not afraid to call a friend. I’m not going to ask him to become the First Chimera again.”

Stiles snorted. He never believed that Theo had changed. “Doesn’t he owe you something?”

“Yes. He owes _me._ But what, Stiles, in all the years we’ve known each other, would make you think that I would ever ask someone to do something for me that I could do myself? If I decided that we had to assassinate Monroe, what makes you think that I would ask someone else to kill her for me?”

“You did it against Gerard. You did it against Theo.” 

Scott snarled. “Don’t act like you don’t know the difference. I didn’t target Derek, Gerard did. I didn’t target Deucalion, Theo did.”

“Scott, you said don’t care? I don’t care either. I’ll do _anything_ to keep you alive.”

“No you won’t.” Scott couldn’t take it anymore. He was already tense enough, and Stiles had finally broken through his resolve. “Because your ideas aren’t about _you_ doing anything. You want to make me do something that I don’t want to do. If you think killing her is such a great idea, why don’t you ask Peter to kill Monroe? You don’t have to answer that, because I already know why you won’t.”

Stiles face crumpled in on itself. 

“But if you want to play the only-human card again, you can, for old time’s sake.”

Scott turned away at those words. He had never said anything like that before. He had pushed the hurt from Stiles’s words in the rain and shoved them down deep with everything else, but they hadn’t disappeared. They had festered.

“What happened to us?” Stiles said so quietly that anyone else might have not heard it, but Scott did. He always heard Stiles. 

“One night we went into the woods, and a monster attacked.” Scott replied. “But instead of being saved, we ended up saving everyone else.”

“ _You_ saved everyone else; I saved only the people I loved. I still want to.” This time Stiles interrupted his denial. “I want my friend back.”

“I don’t think there’s much of him left. If I don’t do this, if I don’t end this, I don’t how much longer even that part’s going to last.”

Stiles wiped his eyes. “I should be there.” 

“You are here, Stiles, in every way that matters. Let’s talk about something else.”

So they did. Stiles talked about the coming end of the semester and the two-week vacation he was going to take with Lydia before the summer phase of his internship began. He talked about the tests he would have to take in August to see if he could actually make it into the FBI Academy. Scott assured him he would, because he couldn’t imagine him not going.

It made Scott a little sad, but it also made him a lot more determined, because he hadn’t been lying to Stiles. He wanted the life that his friends had. He wasn’t jealous, but he was tired. Tired of waiting in hotel rooms like this one. Tired of attending funerals for people he couldn’t save. Tired of hatred directed at him for something he had never wanted. 

He could end it here and now, if this plan worked. It was a big ‘if.’

Scott heard the approach before he saw them. “Stiles. It’s time.”

Stiles swallowed. “You fucking make this work.” 

Scott nodded and reached out and shut down the video link. Then he triggered the scrubber program that had been installed. It started working the moment there was a knock on the door.

“Who is it?”

“My name is Detective Bell of the New York Police Department. I’d like to talk to you, if you have a few moments.”

Scott opened the door. “Of course, detective.”

**~*~**

As interrogation rooms go, Scott had been in worse. They seemed to be uniformly designed to make suspects uncomfortable by making them feel isolated and helpless without provoking them to rage. Most of the smaller police departments he had been in used bare concrete and linoleum coupled with security cameras for that purpose. Usually, the two-way mirrors were obvious, forcing the suspect to look at themselves while knowing that others were watching – and judging – them.

There were very few individuals, human or otherwise, who were completely free from guilt. There were very few individuals, human or otherwise, who were comfortable with being judged. That’s why the authorities always let suspects sit by themselves for some time before the interrogation began. The longer they sat, the more time they had to think. And worry. And become unsettled.

But this was exactly where Scott wanted to be, and the longer he sat there, the better.

The chair was still uncomfortable, even though it was a damn sight better than the gray metal folding chairs that he usually had to sit on. The walls had been made from a dull, neutral gray material, designed to muffle sound coming from the inside. The cameras and the microphones were well hidden, though they couldn’t be hid from his senses. The obvious two-way mirror had been placed in a side wall, rather than directly in front of the suspect. The suspect would have to turn his head to look into it, aware of the scrutiny and distracted by it.

If there was anything he had learned in this four-year struggle against Monroe and her fanatics, other than the necessity to keep alert to his surroundings, it was patience. The first couple of times he had raced to protect targets, he had either caused more trouble than he had stopped, or he had nearly died. Only Mr. Argent’s steadying hand had kept him from running straight to his own death.

Patience didn’t come naturally to werewolves. It was probably among the first things that Gerard had taught Tamora. He couldn’t know for sure, since he had never had a discussion with her after that fight in the tunnels. But it had been the first thing that Gerard had taught Chris, and he and his step-father had had plenty of talks about hunting, about how hatred can corrupt even the strongest will, about terrible fathers.

As if on cue, Sherlock Holmes and Joan Watson entered together.

“Do you go everywhere with her?”

“We’re a team.” To prove a point, Sherlock pulled the chair out for his colleague. “We complement each other’s abilities and compensate for each other’s weaknesses.”

“I know the feeling.” Scott smiled at both of them. “You went through a lot of trouble to talk to me. Any particular reason?”

Watson returned the smile. “We’ll get to that, but there’s an art to these things. Small talk helps establish rapport and that helps both sides. Unless you have some place you need to be?”

Scott shook his head. 

“I’m Joan Watson.”

“Scott McCall.” 

Sherlock had settled himself down and had been staring at both of them. “But you knew her name already.”

“Yes, Mr. Holmes.” 

“I’m curious how you know.” His gestures sharpen as does the edge of his voice. “We’ve never met, and Dr. Watson’s book hasn’t been published quite yet.”

Watson glanced over at him but she didn’t say anything. 

Scott thought about telling the truth — that his hearing was one hundred times better than human hearing — but make it sarcastic. Argent had taught him that the best tactic when dealing with local police was to balance politeness and confidence. This time, however, he needed to push these two toward his goal. “I may look young, but I’ve been involved with things like this for a long time. You know I was looking into Randolph’s death. Doesn’t it make sense to find out which detectives are involved in the case? I assume Detective Bell is on the other side of the glass.”

“If you’re familiar with police procedure,” Watson continued lightly, “you know we’re not going to confirm that.”

“No, I guess you wouldn’t.”

“Four years is not a long time, honestly,” Holmes returned to the attack. “Though you’ve managed to travel quite a bit since you left Beacon Hills. I haven’t finished putting together your full itinerary; I will though. Right now, I’m more interested in why rather than where. You haven’t been following a band.”

Scott shook his head. “No. Not a band.”

“I didn’t think so. You’ve been following a woman.”

“Was that a question?”

Holmes glanced at him in the eye before looking away. “No, it wasn’t a question. Tamora Monroe used to be your high school guidance counselor.”

“Just for a semester.”

“How often did you see her during that semester?” Watson asked him. 

“I never saw her. I was … too busy by senior year to talk to a counselor. Probably for the best, considering what happened.”

With an eagerness that only someone who has been waiting to show what they’ve figured out, Holmes clapped his hands. “What happened being her sudden career change into a professional killer.”

Scott hadn’t expected him to have come to that conclusion yet. The plan had been for him to give them enough information in this interview.

“You’ve been following her around the country as she and what I assume are her henchmen have been killing people in several different states. Talking to us as you are denotes a change in your tactics. You’ve seldom sought to involve local law enforcement, other than the Beacon Hills Police Department, who are clearly your allies. You’re friends with the son of the sheriff, aren’t you?”

“Uhm.” 

“I wasn’t supposed to figure that out, was I?” Holmes leaned back in his chair with a satisfied smile. “But while the work on the files the sheriff sent us was top quality, it wasn’t good enough to evade my attention. You want the NYPD’s help in apprehending Ms. Monroe and ending her killing spree. I’m quite happy to say that we can assist you in this, but you’re going to have to tell me the whole story.”

Scott’s face fell. Stiles had told him that they were good, but this was too good. Holmes and Watson’s attention was supposed to be focused on Monroe, not on him.

“I can’t really tell you.”

Watson seemed more sympathetic. “We’ve figured out that this is the most recent iteration of some sort of feud that goes back decades. We can understand you wanting to end it, but we’re not going to allow to use us to do so without knowing what exactly it is.”

“I don’t want you to end it,” Scott said and it was true. “I want you to arrest the person who murdered Randolph Carmichael. That’s what you do, isn’t it?”

Holmes and Watson exchanged a significant look between them.

“Yes, but there are two small problems with that. The first is my own curiosity. You can’t present to me an enormous string of murders and mayhem and not have me dig through it until I have the truth. The second is the requirements of the law. While the evidence your allies edited for me points in the right direction, without being able to prove motive, it would be far too easy for her to never see the inside of a court room let alone a jail cell. I can’t turn to precinct captain and tell him to arrest her on my say-so.”

“The first one I can’t help you with. The second one is not a problem.”

“How so?”

Scott took a deep breath. “I’m going to help you catch Monroe in the act.”

**~*~**

Joan had only been on a few stakeouts. Most of the time she showed up at the scene after the crime had been committed but before it had been cleaned up. The few stakeouts on which she had joined Sherlock had been simple surveillance, but this one contained the possibility of violence. She found herself a little nervous, but she wasn’t going to back away from it. She was too curious as to what was really going on, and she wasn’t going to find it out sitting at home.

“Are you sure this is going to work?” Detective Bell asked from his chair next to the radio in the back. Joan sat across from him. 

“No,” Sherlock replied brusquely from the passenger seat; he turned to the driver. “Go around the block.”

Watson shrugged at the look on Marcus’s face. “We didn’t have anything you could hold him on, and he’s the only lead so far to Carmichael’s murder. He obviously knows more than we do about it, but he’s not telling.”

“That’s obstruction of justice. I could hold him on that.”

“Only, Detective Bell, if we could prove he knows something we don’t. Otherwise, we’d be able to hold him until his lawyer got there.” Sherlock craned his neck to relocate the young man, who was taking his time walking down the street, seeming to keep to the alleys. “I can tell a judge that the files have been altered, but I can’t tell them exactly how. I can tell that he’s been in the vicinity of crime scenes all over the United States, including dozens in his hometown, but he’s never been officially or directly tied to a murder.”

“So either he’s part of the killing or he knows who it is, yet either way he won’t tell us.” Bell grimaced. “But he’s willing to show us. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Maybe he’s protecting someone?” Joan wondered out loud. “Or perhaps a whole lot of someones.”

“I believe you are correct, Watson. He’ll want to minimize the exposure of his allies.” 

“So he’s stringing us along. Why did we agree to follow him again? How do we know this isn’t some trick?”

“Deduction, Marcus. He wants to help us because he wants to find justice for his friend Carmichael. He’s not seeking revenge, or he would never have involved the police. If he wanted to evade questioning, he would have left the city. If he wanted the murder to remain unsolved, he wouldn’t have had his allies send us altered files. While it’s not optimal, he remains our only lead on this case, so for the time being we should play along.”

Bell crossed his arms, and Joan knew that Sherlock had won. Working together for long as they had, he trusted the consultant when he spoke like this, but he was clearly uncomfortable with letting a non-police officer dictate how things went. 

Sherlock didn’t miss the gesture. “I choose to believe in his benevolence, if not his honesty. It’s the only possible way his actions make sense, and when you remove the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be true.”

Peering out through the windshield, Joan frowned. “He may be benevolent, but I’m not sure he’s wise. He keeps cutting through alleyways that I wouldn’t take if you held a gun to my head.”

On the radio, McCall’s voice crackled. They had wired him at his insistence. “Be ready. Here they come.”

Everyone but the driver looked over his shoulder. “Who? I don’t see anyone.” 

From their position, they had watched McCall walk down an alleyway. A black SUV had suddenly accelerated from behind them, passing them swiftly, and turned sharply to follow the young man down the alleyway. 

“What the hell?” Detective Bell grabbed his radio and called for backup. 

“Should we stop?” 

“Keep your distance.” Sherlock threw out a hand to point for the driver. “This is what he wanted us to hear. Park over there.”

Joan reached over across Marcus and turned up the volume on the radio, while the police detective checked the recorders. Suddenly the inside of the van was filled with something that sounded like an animal roaring, followed quickly by the sound of gunfire. 

“What the hell was that?” Marcus grabbed his gun.

“I don’t know about the first sound, but the second was an assault rifle.

“All units converge on our location.”

Joan reached out and grabbed Marcus’s hand. She had heard a word whispered on the radio. “Wait.”

A woman’s voice came over the speakers. “I didn’t imagine it ending like this, Scott. Were you tired?”

“It isn’t over, Tamora.”

“Oh, but it is. I’ve got you. I might have wanted to make an example of you before, but after all this time, it’s best if I end it here and now.”

“End it? It won’t end.” McCall’s voice on the radio coughed once. “Who will you hate next?”

“You should know by now, that I don’t hate you. I simply know that you and all the things like you don’t have any place in this world. You put up a good fight and cost me more time than I thought I would need to spend.” The woman’s voice was cool. “Go. Only shoot him again if he moves. We want to be long gone before the police arrive.”

“You’re going to cut me in half like you did Carmichael?”

“You know how this works. But don’t worry. I’ll make it as painless as possible, just like I did with him.”

“Now!” shouted Sherlock.

“Go! Go! Go!” Marcus ordered, and he threw open the van doors and ran towards the alley. The officer driving the van turned on the light and sped open. 

Chaos erupted at the scene. Joan determined to stay in the van, but she lunged forward and kept Sherlock form leaping out as well. She strained to hear, but other the shouting and the sirens heralding the arrival of uniformed police, there was little chance to hear what was going on.

Sherlock had that look of intense concentration on his face, like he was waiting his moment to strike. But he was just a consultant and it was tense moments.

Finally, Detective Bell opened the door; he looked like he was recovering from the fight. “Doctor, McCall and several others have been shot. We’ve called an ambulance, but could you take a look at him?”

“Sure.” Joan grabbed her bag. “Let’s go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not an expert on the law or police procedure.


	5. Chapter 5

The pain in her side was nothing. A bullet wound paled in comparison to what the Beast did to her in that school bus. Tamora still dreamed about that night, from time to time. She would startle awake, gasping for breath but unable to move in case she drew its attention. For so many years, she never felt comfortable at night unless she had some wolf’s bane and a weapon on her. 

She recognized the symptoms post-traumatic stress disorder when she saw it, even in herself. She was a trained counselor, after all. She saw a therapist as often as she could, having finally found one whom she trusted. Progress was slow, and neither of them were under any illusion that her symptoms would ever go completely away. Experiences as fundamental as the horror on that school bus never truly did.

The process to find a trustworthy psychologist had been tedious, especially with her dedication to the idea that anyone involved with the supernatural had to be told the truth. The first two therapists she had tried to work with had been more interested in treating her belief that monsters existed than the consequence of what those monster had done. She had sat there and listened to them try to explain things away. They had not simply refused to believe her; they had not wanted to believe her.

Most people were sheep. She tried not to think too poorly of them. It helped when she thought of herself as a shepherd.

What pained Tamora at the present time more than her wound was the humiliation. She had had misgivings, when she first learned of the opportunity to take McCall. The true alpha had learned, after several very close calls early in their war, to be careful about concealing his movements. But when her contact within the New York Police Department had told her about him being brought in for questioning and had given her the address of his hotel room, it had been too good an opportunity to pass up.

It had obviously been a trap. McCall’s people had to have guessed that she had someone in the police department, though it wouldn’t have been very hard to come to that conclusion. Gerard had taught her that her first step in any major operation was making sure she could neutralize or at least monitor law enforcement. It was a habit, and McCall had used it against her by purposefully involving the police. In her defense, it was something he had never done before.

It had gotten her cuffed to a hospital bed. 

She looked up as a man entered her hospital room. Since the two guards outside her door let him enter without any fuss, he wasn’t a doctor.

“Good morning, Ms. Monroe. I’m glad you’re awake.”

“Somehow, I doubt you wish me well.”

“I was being honest. If you were asleep, I wouldn’t be able to talk to you. My name is Sherlock Holmes. I’d like to ask you some questions.”

“Shouldn’t I have a lawyer present?”

“You could request one, but this is not an official interrogation. I do not possess a badge. I’m simply a consultant for the NYPD, so I have no authority to demand that you answer my questions. On the other hand, in the spirit of fair play, I will let you know that I am often called upon to give testimony, and since I’m not a police officer, this is not a custodial interrogation, so Fifth Amendment protections do not apply.”

“Hmm.”

“I can assure you I am not wearing a wire, and this conversation is not being recorded.”

“And I should trust your word on that?”

“That is an evaluation you can only make for yourself, Ms. Monroe. But I’ll point out that if your lawyer was here they would inform you that my announcement would render any surreptitious recording inadmissible as evidence.” 

“I’m also sure that they would inform me that even if you can’t use hearsay during my trial, you could use what I tell you to help build a case against me.”

“Most likely. Still, I wanted to take this opportunity to talk to you, because I think you’re the type of person who wants to talk.”

Tamora studied him. “Let me guess: you want to know why.”

“While I’m sure your backstory is very persuasive, Ms. Monroe, I don’t need you to tell me that.” With not a little drama, Holmes pulled up a chair and sat down. “I’m a very good detective, and I won’t need you to tell me your motivations when I will eventually discover them for myself.”

“You may be surprised at what you discover. You may find yourself wishing you hadn’t done what you did.”

“Done what? Capture you?”

She nodded.

Holmes, to his credit, did not smirk at her. He was supremely confident in his manner and he was totally judging her, but any enjoyment he was taking in this wasn’t at her expense. Tamora realized that right now, she was part of a mystery.

“I fail to see how your private war would cause me any regret.”

“That’s because you don’t know the truth.” She could express confidence as well. “It’s been hidden from you.”

“It frequently is and most often by people like you. I do have a knack for uncovering it, much to a criminal’s chagrin. On the other hand, I’m less curious as to your motives as to your plans. Your endgame, as it were. How long did you think you could go around North America executing people at will?”

“As long as I could or until the task was done.” She meant every word. There was still so much to do. 

Instead of being surprised, Holmes nodded as if that confirmed what he had been expecting. “I suspect it’s easy to be so determined against environmental lawyers and vet technicians.”

She thought about telling him the truth, but she had met people like him before. It was better to let him make good on his boast and discover it himself, for then he would come to her. All she needed to do was to seed the fallow earth. “Harder to be determined against people who are far more than environmental lawyers and vet technicians. Against people — if you can call them that — who possess hidden power and face zero accountability.”

“Randolph Carmichael did something which he needed to be held accountable?” Holmes countered.

Tamora was smarter than to go into specifics. “Your earlier choice of words was very accurate. It’s a war. In a war, you don’t have time to determine which soldier fired which bullet.”

“But wars also have strict rules about non-combatants.” Holmes countered. “I’ve dug into the lawyer’s past. I can’t connect him to a single violent incident aside from an anti-fracking demonstration that turned into a riot.”

“Power alone can make someone a legitimate target.” 

Holmes remained silent for several minutes. Tamora didn’t press him to talk. As long as she was careful, the conversation was less boring than watching bad television. Finally, he put his hands together and stood up. “I see.”

“Do you?”

“Of course.” The detective hovered over her bed, looking down on her on more ways than one. “Think about this: I am superior to you. I have a better memory. I have been well-taught in private schools. I have significant experience across many fields. I have fantastic analytical skills. I have a finely honed intuition. My intellect quite simply puts me on a level above ninety-nine percent of the people I interact with on a daily basis.”

“And a healthy ego.”

“Perhaps. Yet it does come with drawbacks. I once had a romantic partner who was every bit my equal. She turned out to be a professional assassin who found killing people an appropriate challenge for her gifts. Your attitude reminds me of hers.”

“I’m not an assassin,” Tamora bristled at the insinuation. “If I were to do such things, I would it for justice, not for money.”

“Of course you would, yet you share the same flaw. She views individuals primarily through the lens of capability. She wouldn’t kill me — even though it would protect her — because she values the intellectual qualities we share. She compared my mind with art. You do the same.”

Tamora sneered. He thought she was an envious bigot. “Sometimes you have to deal with the world as it comes to you.”

“And yet, like most of humanity, I have flaws. I am a heroin addict. I often fail to pay sufficient attention to the basic concepts of etiquette and social interaction. I have an unhappy relationship with the remaining members of my family. For all the strength of my cognitive faculties, I have made myself and others miserable on more than one occasion.”

“You’re only …” Tamora bit her lip.

“You were about to say I’m only human, on the same level as everyone else. Precisely. Human beings have a right to existence, which cannot be abrogated by capability or its lack. You kill others because they possess something you don’t have; something you fear. It’s rather pedestrian. I have stopped you this time, Tamora Monroe, and should you somehow slip the net that I have laid, I will find a way stop you again. I’ll see you in court.”

**~*~**

Eventually, even the most dedicated nurses and doctors have to take care of other patients, even the ones who work the Intensive Care Unit. They have an entire hospital to run, and they can’t spend all their time with one person. This particular patient had stubbornly outlasted their ability to focus on him.

Joan Watson crossed her arms in frustration. She may not have been a practicing surgeon any longer, but this brought back memories of the worst struggles with recalcitrant patients she could remember. Strangely enough, the easiest people to take care always seemed to be the ones for whom the medical staff could do little but wait and hope. The hardest ones were always those whom they knew how to treat, yet the patients remained ferociously obstinate about it.

In this case, Scott McCall lay on the hospital bed, skin sallow and eyes glassy, staring back at her. For all he had been through, he remained serene.

“You need to sleep.” She admonished in a voice she remembered using a lot back in her own days of medical practice.

“I’m fine.”

“You were shot three times with poison bullets eighteen hours ago. Surgeons removed the bullet fragments fourteen hours ago, which of course you remember because you insisted on being awake throughout it. Then you were treated for the aconite solution that was slowly killing you.” 

“And now I’m fine.” 

“You need to sleep.” She took a step forward. “You may not be in any danger of dying, remarkably, but if your body is going to fully recover, it needs to be at its full strength, which means it needs rest. I don’t know what you’re trying to prove.”

“I’m not …” Scott’s eyes wandered for a moment and he cocked his head to the side. “I’m not trying to prove anything.”

“They’re going to be talking about the twenty-two year old Latino who stayed awake for forty-five minutes of surgery in this hospital for the next two decades. Topical anesthetic only goes so far; you should have been fully sedated.”

“I’ve felt worse pain.” The young man blinked and swallowed, as if he wished to take the words back.

“You have, haven’t you?”

Joan studied the way Scott suddenly couldn’t meet her eyes, the way he tried to sit up straighter but only tightened his shoulders into a hunch. She came over and sat next to him. “You’re happy to see the end of this.”

“It’s not the end.”

“From what Sherlock’s put together, Tamora Monroe was the leader of the other side. If you cut off the head of the snake, the body dies.”

“Unless it’s a hydra.” Scott smiled at her, and it was at once both nostalgic and ghastly. “I’m … I’m not trying to be ungrateful. It’ll be less dangerous now that she’s behind bars, but as I was lying there, I was thinking. I can’t … even though she’s gone … there will be others.”

“Why?”

“I told you I can’t tell you that.”

She licked her lips as she stared down at the foot of the bed. “And I think that all of this is a bit of a cop out. It’s not wrong to ask for help, even if that help would require things in your life to change. Is who or what you’re hiding that important?”

“The truth is both a poison and a cure,” Scott muttered.

“What?”

“The truth is both a poison and a cure.” He said it more loudly this time. “You can use it, but it can be used against you. If it were just me, maybe I would tell you, but it’s not. That’s not saying that you and Mr. Holmes might not figure it out eventually; you’re both smarter than I wagered. But it’s not only my secret to share. Don’t you think I’d want people to help me?”

“To be honest? No.”

Scott’s whole body clenched at that. 

“I was a surgeon. I was a pretty good one, too. But there was this patient, Gerald Castoro. He died on the table, and I was suspended for it. But when the suspension was up, I found that I couldn’t do it anymore. Everyone — and I mean everyone — tried to help me cope with what had happened. They tried in many different ways. I wouldn’t let them help.”

The young man looked away.

“His death was a mistake; it wasn’t my only one in the operating room, but it was the one that stuck with me. Mistakes like that happen all the time to surgeons, though I felt guilty about it. I couldn’t move on.”

“I …”

“It wasn’t really until I became a sober companion that I figured out why I was so reluctant to accept help from others. It wasn’t out of guilt, or rather, it wasn’t only out of guilt. It was about control.”

Scott bit his lip. 

“Mistakes are hard to accept, but it’s even harder to accept that no one really has a choice about making them once in a while. Our society likes to treats mistakes and addictions not as an inescapable part of life but as a failure in character.”

“But … isn’t it though? At least partly?”

“Are the decisions of the addict part of the nature of addiction? Yes. But there is also biochemistry, family history, personal stress, opportunity. A person can drink two glasses of wine every day for twenty years and not develop a need for it, and another person can become an alcoholic during three weeks of hard partying. Our lives are infinitely complex, yet for some reason we still keep trying to maintain the delusion that we alone determine everything that happens to us, let alone what happens to the people we care about. For me back then – and I’m guessing for you right now – accepting help looks too close to _surrendering_ control. It’s not a healthy way to live.”

The young man turned away and rumbled low in his throat. It almost sounded like a growl. “I have plenty of help.”

“I’m sure you do. But do you accept help that frees you from taking responsibility for everything that happens to you?”

He turned back to her. His eyes, while still tired, were now a little wet. “It’s different. It’s what … it’s who I am.”

“I was a surgeon. What are you?” 

“I … I can’t tell you that.”

There was a knock on the door and both of them looked at it. The door opened up and a man stood there. Joan didn’t recognize him, and he wasn’t a member of the hospital staff.

“Time to go, Scott.”

Watson stood up. “You’re not a nurse.”

“He’s my step-dad.”

“Chris Argent.” The man walked over and extended his hand. “Are you a doctor here?” 

“Joan Watson. No, I’m a consultant with the NYPD.”

“I’ve heard of you, Dr. Watson. I’m here to take Scott back to California.”

Joan narrowed his eyes. “He’s being discharged?”

“His condition is stable, and I and his mother will take good care of him at home.” 

Scott piped up, eager to get out of the room. “Mom’s a nurse.”

“He’s going to have to go down to the police department, I think, before he leaves. They’ll want to go over his statement.”

Mr. Argent and Scott looked at each other. 

“Okay. I’ll do it as soon as possible.” 

Watson stood back and watched them get ready to depart. She was going to make sure that her and Sherlock were at the station at the appropriate time.

**~*~**

“I’m quite afraid as a native of Great Britain, I don’t understand what you are trying to say here.” Sherlock felt that he could employ dry wit more appropriately than almost anyone else he knew. He leveled a gaze at the government bureaucrat from the Department of Homeland Security, which was an oxymoron if he had ever heard one.

“You are enjoined by this restraining order from continuing your investigation into the murder of Randolph Carmichael or involving yourself in its prosecution. You are enjoined by this restraining order from involving yourself with any criminal case involving Tamora Monroe or Gerard Argent, deceased.” The man sighed, having repeated it for the third time. “So ordered by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.” 

Sherlock sucked in air through his teeth. “Nope. I don’t understand.”

“Holmes!” Detective Bell exclaimed as he watched the federal agents take the boxes out of the room. 

Joan came over and took him by the arm and tried to lead him away. 

“It’s a matter of national security,” the bureaucrat from Washington said.

“It’s intolerable, Watson, simply intolerable.” Sherlock was incensed. “A matter of national security, indeed.”

“Come on, Sherlock, there’s nothing we can do.” 

“National security!” Sherlock shouted back at the bureaucrat. “Next think you know they will want to go through my house.”

“As a matter of fact,” said the nettled DHS agent. “We are executing a warrant on your premises as we speak.” 

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “You’ll be hearing from my lawyer. I promise you that.”

Joan pulled him into an office. Bell followed after them.

“There’s nothing we can do, Holmes,” the police detective explained. “All the paperwork was in order. Gregson’s on the phone to the DHS, but for now, we have to comply with their request.”

“You can let go of me, Watson, I’m not going to do violence to that mousy simpleton. Marcus, do you have any idea why your federal government would want to involve themselves in this matter?”

“Well, the murders do cross state lines. That makes it federal jurisdiction.” 

Joan put her head out of the office door to make sure they wouldn’t be overheard. “Wouldn’t that make it the domain of the FBI?”

Bell nodded. “But they’re not involved.”

“Curioser and curioser.” Sherlock nearly flounced into a chair. _Nearly_ flounced. He wasn’t going to allow himself to be that dramatic. “Were you present when they talked to Captain Gregson?”

“I’m the lead on the case.”

“Did they offer you anymore explanation than they offered me?”

Bell laughed in irritation. “Hardly. They just demanded all the evidence and announced that they were taking Monroe into custody and that they wanted to place McCall in protective custody.”

Sherlock tapped his fingers together. “They are being quite thorough. I don’t suppose there’s any chance we can get to the hospital before they secure those two?”

“Probably not. The impression I got, it was a done deal.”

“No, it’s not.” Watson dug into her phone. “McCall’s step-father checked him out yesterday. I need to contact them.”

“Watson! Why didn’t you tell me this?”

She looked up over her phone. “I told you we had to come down to the station this morning to talk to McCall, didn’t I? He wouldn’t have been able to talk to us here from his hospital room.”

“I need to know everything, Watson, at all times.” Sherlock felt offended. Joan knew how much he disliked being ignorant. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I’m sure that you’d have wanted to immediately investigate who checked them out and where they went, and I wanted something different. I wanted McCall to sleep, the way he wasn’t doing at the hospital, but the minute his step-father …” She trailed off.

Sherlock tilted his head. _So that’s what I look like when I have an epiphany,_ he thought to himself.

“The person who picked McCall up was his stepfather.” She thought about it. “Christopher Argent. The other name on the restraining order was Gerard Argent. It might be a coincidence …”

“Doubtful, but easy to confirm.”

“It’s very close to confirmation that this is an inter-generational feud, even if it hasn’t remained within a single family.”

Sherlock affected nonchalance. “Very possibly, Watson.”

“Come on, I know how much you like to be proved right. Do you want to come with us to the airport, Marcus?” Joan got out her phone again.

“Why would I be going to the airport?”

“Because once I tell Mr. McCall and his father what has happened, I have a very strong hunch that’s where we’re going to have to go if we want to talk to them.”

**~*~**

Scott found he didn’t like wheelchairs.

He was sure, of course, that there were people who needed them. He would never tell anyone that he didn’t like wheelchairs, because even in his own mind it felt whiny and ungrateful. He’d been shot three times less than thirty-six hours ago, and he was fully recovered. Most anyone else he knew would have had to spend months of time doing that. Most humans he knew would be dead.

But he found himself praying for boarding to start soon. Argent would probably make him sit in the wheelchair until they got off the plane in San Francisco, which would be hours and hours. Scott prayed he would have the patience for it, though he chuckled to himself. He had the patience to sit still while surgeons fished out the bullets. This would be a piece of cake.

Staying awake for those eighteen hours was among the hardest thing he had ever done. As long as he was awake, he could stop himself from healing, as any alpha could. But the topical anesthetic he had demanded had worn off before the surgeons had even started.

As he had told Dr. Watson, he had dealt with worse pain.

Theo had once told him that physical pain was eventually manageable. It was true; he had managed to stay conscious and force his body act as if it were human. But sitting in this chair was not physical pain; instead, it reminded him of when he had asthma. The burning in his chest, the panic, and the fight to draw breath would stay with him long after the attack over, but that wasn’t the worst part. It was waiting for the next one. When he had been at home, when he had been at school, or even when he was walking down the street, he couldn’t escape the awareness that he could have one at any time. The truth sat there, like a vulture in a tree, spoiling everything he did.

That was one of the reasons he had loved Stiles so much. Stiles was always on the move, always busy, always demanding attention. Stiles made him forget that there was a chance he could stop breathing. When he let Stiles carry him off on whatever adventure they wanted to do that day, he didn’t have time to be afraid. 

His ambition with lacrosse also helped banish the anticipation. With the benefit of hindsight, he would never have made first line, but he also would never have stopped. If he had let that weight around his neck keeping him from trying, he would never ever get anything he wanted. 

He still wasn’t grateful for the Bite, though. He would never be grateful for that poisoned gift, no matter how much he accomplished with it. He had traded one vulture for another, though instead of being unable to breath, he would always be a companion to killing, whether someone tried to kill him or he had to fight to keep from killing someone.

Being in this wheelchair, while not the same thing, made him feel the same way. He didn’t need it anymore, but yet he had to sit there, doing nothing, being helpless, simply because of its presence.

“Stop fidgeting.” Chris didn’t look up from his magazine. “You’ll be home by nightfall.”

“Easy for you to say, _Dad._ ”

The old hunter turned a page. “You only call me that when you’re pissed off at me.”

“I’m not pissed off at you. I’m just pissed off.”

Argent closed the magazine. “Want to talk about it?”

“I did it. I won. So why don’t I feel any different?”

“Several reasons. Most importantly, you’ve not learned to compartmentalize. That means your emotions bleed over between events. You’re still amped up over the plan, so your subconscious is telling you to be alert. But, consciously, there’s nothing to be alert about.”

Scott grunted.

“Also, you think it was too easy.”

“I got shot. Again. How is that easy?”

Chris looked him right in the eye.

“Yeah. I have a bad feeling about this.”

His step-father chuckled. “Stiles would be glad you said that.”

“What? Oh. Yeah, I watched the movies.” Scott sighed and looked for the thirtieth time towards the airplane counter. He was about to ask Argent to check again to see if there were any delays when he caught a scent. Whipping his head around, he saw the detectives. “Oh, here they are.”

Sherlock Holmes and Joan Watson were striding toward them. Holmes moved forward like he was striding into battle; he held his body tense and seemed to be forcing himself not to run. Watson moved more loosely, but she wasn’t relaxed. Instead, she seemed like a fighter waiting to step into the ring. 

Chris whispered. “Remember—”

“I know.” Scott smiled at the pair while Chris stood up to greet them. “What happened? Why didn’t you want us to come to the station?”

Dr. Watson put her hand on Holmes shoulder to calm him, a gesture that reminded Scott of how he would try to calm Stiles down when he got worked up in his righteous wrath. She then proceeded to inform both of them of the Department of Homeland Security’s takeover of the case and the restraining orders issued against them.

“They can do that?”

“Apparently they can.” Holmes turns to Chris. “So can you tell me why I would be forbidden from looking into the affairs of your late father?”

“I could.” The hunter gazed at him steadily, letting him know that he hadn’t any intention of doing so.

“Mr. Argent.” Scott finally felt like he had to intervene. 

“Yes, Mr. Argent.” Holmes narrowed his eyes. “You have this opportunity to persuade me why I shouldn’t keep digging into the secrets you and your stepson are so desperate to protect. I have to admit, I am a driven man, and there is nothing more tempting to me than being told I shouldn’t follow my investigation wherever it leads, restraining order or no restraining order.”

“Is that a threat?” 

“Say rather it is the most likely consequence.”

Scott cleared his throat. “We owe them something.”

Chris looked down at him and then nodded. “My family owns Argent Arms. We supply weapons to police stations across the United States. That is probably the reason they gave to the court, which would probably be enough.”

“But it’s not the real reason.”

“No.” With another glance at Scott, he sighed. “My father was a ruthless man who corrupted the principles for which my family has stood for hundreds of years. He ruined lives and was responsible for the deaths of many innocent people. When I disappointed him, he chose Tamora Monroe to be his student.”

Scott had to speak up. “You didn’t disappoint him. You rejected him. One of the people that Gerard tried to hurt was me. More than once.”

Dr. Watson looked between them. “Okay. It still doesn’t tell us why the federal government would get involved.”

“It doesn’t, Watson, but it does give me another piece of the puzzle. Your family possesses a lot of influence across the United States.” 

“North America.” Argent admitted. “And parts of Europe. But Monroe doesn’t have those contacts. That’s one thing my father never got to share with her, so they look to me as the head of the family now.” 

They stood there, thinking back and forth. Scott felt sick. “Are they going to let her go?”

Holmes tilted his head and his eyes looked beyond the walls of the airport. He pursed his lips and shook his head. “It’s unlikely she will be let go. You don’t declare someone an enemy of the state if you’re going to let them go free. I think it’s more likely they’re going to make her disappear. While I did have a conversation with her, you know her better than I do. What’s the chance that if Monroe went to trial, she would reveal information about the Argent family that your contacts didn’t want being made public?”

Scott thought back to the rage that Monroe felt for being lied to when she was a victim of the Beast. “One-hundred percent. She’s a fanatic.”

“I’m not going to let this go,” Holmes stated after a moment. “For some reason, you don’t want to tell me the full truth, but I’m going to find out, someday.”

Chris Argent nodded but didn’t answer. 

“I’m sure you probably will, but I won’t help you do it.” Scott stated. “In fact, I’ll try to keep it from you. It’s not just for my protection, but for the protection of a lot of people. But if it makes any difference, I’m really sure you helped me save a lot of innocent people that Monroe would have hurt.”

“It does help,” Watson said. 

“Marginally.” Holmes pointed at the desk. “It seems they’ve started pre-boarding for your flight. Have a present trip. And …” He hesitated. “You’re welcome.”

Without any more stalling, Chris took Scott’s wheelchair and pushed it toward the on-loading ramp. Scott waved, but he also listened to their conversation, from a distance. 

“How hard are you going to pursue this?” The woman asked. 

“Not as much as I could. A murderer has been stopped, and that’s the important thing. It’s not worth challenging the United States government. _Yet._ But I won’t forget, as well you know since you’ve seen my old case files. I’ll figure it out one day. In this case, it’s easy to set it aside since I have few leads, and those leads I do have would require me antagonizing that young man over there. Don’t you think he’s been through enough?”

Scott felt a little sorry for him. Holmes didn’t seem someone who failed to satisfy his curiosity often.

“I’m sure you have some speculation about this.”

“Come now, Watson. You know how I hate to speculate without enough information. It’s useless. There’s something hidden in this feud, but those involved in it have a great deal of practice concealing it, leaving me only a few scant clues for which many possible solutions fit.” He laughed as they turned to leave the airport. “For all I know, they could be werewolves.”


End file.
